Ambulatory Clinician's Guide to Inpatient Service: An Innovative Rapid Onboarding Strategy for the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Background and Significance When hospitals are subject to prolonged surges in patients, such as during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, additional clinicians may be needed to care for the rapid increase of acutely ill patients. How might we quickly prepare a large number of ambulatory-based clinicians to care for hospitalized patients using the inpatient workflow of the electronic health record (EHR)? Objectives The aim of the study is to create a successful training intervention which prepares ambulatory-based clinicians as they transition to inpatient services. Methods We created a training guide with embedded videos that describes the workflow of an inpatient clinician. We delivered this intervention via an e-mail hyperlink, a static hyperlink inside of the EHR, and an on-demand hyperlink within the EHR. Results In anticipation of the first peak of inpatients with COVID-19 in April 2020, the training manual was accessed 261 times by 167 unique users as clinicians anticipated being called into service. As our institution has not yet needed to deploy ambulatory-based clinicians for inpatient service, usage data of the training document is still pending. Conclusion We intend that our novel implementation of a multimedia, highly accessible onboarding document with access from points inside and outside of the EHR will improve clinician performance and serve as a helpful example to other organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Moving Faster than the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Rapid, Digital Transformation of a Public Health System

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Health Information System's Responses to COVID-19 Pandemic in China: A National Cross-sectional Study

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Using Log Data to Measure Provider EHR Activity at a Cancer Center during Rapid Telemedicine Deployment

“…[11][12][13] Practices and regulatory bodies have required rapid change to allow for escalation in telemedicine to meet the needs of social distancing and protecting at-risk populations. 14,15 Hospital systems around the world were charged with rapidly adapting to these challenges to help control the spread of COVID-19 by limiting unnecessary in-person patient encounters, thus shifting from traditional patient care workflows to this novel format. 16,17 Within this aim we ensured that we were able to sort and analyze if the metrics highlighted any differences in impact felt between various provider groups, including physicians versus APPs and a comparison of all divisions within our hospital system.…”